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Shortest Parade in history! But good info anyway
By Gina Spadafori
July 10, 2010
Tomorrow our most current Parade article appears in the print edition. It’s on their website now. It was a “quicky”: The editor asked us to write something very short on summer emergencies to fill a small hole that had opened up in the issue they were working on at that moment.
Fortunately, we just happen to have an emergency-care expert on staff. So our Dr. Tony Johnson gave me a generous piece of his mind and his time — no small matter with all that has been going on in his life lately, including moving and opening a new ER at the Purdue vet school’s teaching hospital.
Our Dr. Johnson simply rocks.
A fair use excerpt of the little article would just about pick up the whole thing. Yep, it’s really that short!
Instead, go check it out. You might pick up a little bit of information that could save your pet’s life.
Thanks again, Dr. Johnson, the funniest man in show biz, er, veterinary medicine.
Oh, and by the way: We’re getting back to a full staffing in the next few days. I’m almost done with the book, Christie’s wrapping up a much-needed two-week vacation, Dr. Johnson’s should be close to done setting up the new ER at Purdue’s veterinary teaching hospital … and soon, Dr. Becker and Mikkel will be home from the Becker family vacation, which way mostly off the grid.
I cannot thank enough the bloggers who really stepped up these last couple of weeks: Liz, David, Ericka and Kim. We’ve been a bit heavy on news and reviews lately and not much on commentary, but things will be balancing out soon enough.
We’ve got some travel coming up, too. I think Christie is still planning to attend the No-Kill Conference, and I’m heading to the AVMA conference (where I finally will get to meet Dr. Patty Khuly in person).
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I like it, sometimes people will only read the short and sweet.
There can never be too much reminding about car and pets. I go nuts when i see someone has left their dog in a parked car, even if they are ‘just running in for a starbucks’. I wait by car (if I can’t find them in the closest store) and call the police, animal control and pretty much anyone else, so when the owner returns they see me steamed mad on the phone describing their car and license number.
I then ask them if they want to sit in the car without air while I ‘run’ in for a coffee.
Just yesterday I was in my car, the temp read 107 frickin’ degrees and that was just the outdoors!
Yes, I know one of these days I will probably end up in cuffs because if I see an animal in a overheated car and the owner or police or animal control doesn’t arrive in time and I see the animal start to faint … I’m breaking in.
Comment by Ericka Basile — July 10, 2010 @ 10:34 am
Just one more reason I love Ericka.
Comment by David S. Greene — July 10, 2010 @ 11:34 am
A woman in my neighborhood removed a dog from a car in a golf course parking lot. She went into the clubhouse, got a coat hanger, and took the dog out. The owner tried to press charges and called 911. The local cop shop sent a K9 officer. He called her a good samaritan and busted the owner for animal abuse.
Can you imagine - a golf course? That poor dog could have been in the car four hours! I may be in CT, but we had 99+° temps this week. Kudos to the cop and kudos to my neighbor!
Comment by PamJJ — July 10, 2010 @ 11:54 am
I would not have bothered with the hanger, but busted the window instead. An emergency is an emergency, my way of thinking.
Comment by VJ — July 10, 2010 @ 6:15 pm
What kind of person would want someone arrested for helping his or her dog? CT, maybe some wall street folk.
Comment by Erich Riesenberg — July 10, 2010 @ 7:41 pm
You know, sometimes the owner is homeless, and living out of their car. That doesn’t make it OK, but it does double the heartbreak and the need for some (human) compassion.
Comment by Rori — July 11, 2010 @ 6:26 am
Sorry, Rori, a guy on the back 9 of a private golf course isn’t homeless. And he shouldn’t have been calling 911 on an elderly woman who was rightly worried about his dog. She didn’t damage his car, and most probably saved his dog from a gruesome death.
Comment by PamJJ — July 11, 2010 @ 7:23 am
PamJJ, I didn’t word my comment well. I didn’t mean to imply that the golf course guy was homeless; he surely was just a big jerk.
I did, however, want to point out that not all dog-left-in-car situations are as straightforward as your example of a clueless guy getting his golf fix.
I witnessed a woman angrily call the police, get impatient for them to arrive, then extract a small dog through the partially open window of a car parked in the shade at a neighborhood pool.
The woman was well-dressed, and had an attitude. The pool is in a very nice part of town. The car in which the dog had been had seen better days, and was full of stuff.
The pool personnel (teenagers) repeatedly told the woman that they believed the car belonged to a homeless man who occasionally snuck into the facilities to bathe, and they dashed off to find him. He emerged, skinny as a skeleton, dripping wet, mortified, from the men’s changehouse.
The woman proceeded to verbally rip him a new one, and rebuffed all suggestions by others to maybe cut him some slack. As in: no harm, no fowl. She refused to hand the dog back to him until the police arrived.
I left before the police got there, because, frankly, the whole thing made me sick to my stomach, and there was a good chance that things were going to get even more disheartening once they arrived.
I earned a little something about rushing to judgment that day, and I just wanted to pass it along.
Comment by Rori — July 11, 2010 @ 9:43 am
I didn’t learn to spell, however. I meant: no harm, no foul.
Comment by Rori — July 11, 2010 @ 10:13 am